6:00pm A few media commitments before we catch up with the guys to see how they felt today:
Jamie Whincup – Car #88
“Today started with qualifying when, just before the last set of tyres, we were in P7 and car #17 was P1 so we had to dig deep, take a risk, and make changes to the car – it was fantastic. I felt the grip, pushed hard and got my second pole of the year which was cool, and my first pole in the dry which was pretty crazy. It’s been a fair drought but it was all about getting off the line and I got off the line well and then just pushed on, just pushed it. I turned the rear vision mirror around and just went as hard as I could for 70 laps. The car was great. We are feeling the pressure of performance, those guys have got more performance on us without a doubt, but all we can do is maximise our setup. I feel we did that today and gave ourselves an opportunity to get the grand prize, but as I can’t stress enough it’s only an opportunity, no more than that. It’s all going to come down to what job we do in three weeks’ time. It was a great weekend for Red Bull Holden in New Zealand. Unfortunately Shane (van Gisbergen) didn’t quite get the run he would have liked today but we are still in there for the Teams Championship as well, that’s still important to us. We’ve got a slim chance, but we’ve got a chance so we’ll prepare as much as possibly can, we’ll go to Newcastle and give it a shot.”
Shane van Gisbergen – Car #97
“We kind of missed it a little bit in qualifying, the track was very different to what we initially thought. We got the car better throughout the session and we salvaged seventh but still not quite enough to get to the front. The race went okay until the hairpin when I had to go around outside of people and from that position, considering our position in the Teams Championship, we ended up just pushing so hard to make it back up. Then, I made a mistake coming into pit lane behind Tim (Slade), he was quite cautious, which he’s allowed to be, and I misjudged it. It would’ve been fine if he wasn’t there, but he just over-slowed and I couldn’t stop in time and ran up the back of him causing a lot of damage. I am gutted for us to lose so many points for our Teams Championship which is so important to us. Pit lane priority is what we’re aiming for and to not score as many points as I could for the team, which was my job for the weekend, is pretty disappointing. The team were awesome though, to fix the car like that in the amount of time we needed to be classified, the car was pretty mangled so the amount of work they did in the short time they had was pretty great. Now we’ve go to do what we can to help Jamie in car #88 win the championship, but also our Team Championship is the priority – to get in front of the Dick Johnson (Team DJR Penske) guys we really have to put two cars out the front of both races and score some good points.”
5:35pm Jamie wins and takes home the Jason Richards Memorial Trophy. An emotional yet proud moment for J-Dub as he was team mates with JR back in ’05! Shane finishes the race in P24 to claim some championship points for the team. Overall a good weekend for Red Bull Holden 🙂
5:31pm Basically the remainder of the race was nail-biting to say the least! Jamie held his lead of McLaughlin but there were plenty of close calls coming out of the pit stops.
4:46pm The team have killed it to get Shane’s car back together in enough time to still classify. He’s back out on the track because that teams championship is so important to us. Any points we can get will matter!
Race tape fixes everything🤕 👊 #VASC #RedBullHolden pic.twitter.com/ZSXhDSPgUS
— Red Bull Holden (@redbullholden) November 5, 2017
4:32pm And then it all comes to a halt when SVG does some damage in pit lane… Just couldn’t slow down quite quick enough and goes up the back of Tim Slade. Uh oh… The team are onto it straight away!
SVG’s got some damage on the way into the pits 🤕 #VASC #RedBullHolden pic.twitter.com/9jmKjtcX9E
— Red Bull Holden (@redbullholden) November 5, 2017
4:21pm There’s carnage in the first lap. Then J-Dub records a purple lap on Lap 6 with 1:03.6772/
4:10pm Jamie’s in pole position, Shane in P7… We’re good to go.
3:10pm One hour until go time… The nerves are starting to rise…
12:46pm Those wings must’ve helped… J-Dub gets pole position with 1:02.5148 and SVG comes in P7 (1:02.7767).
12:22pm Qualifying about the get underway and J-Dub’s getting his wings.
J-Dub getting his wings before qualifying 😎 #givesyouwings #RedBullHolden #VASC pic.twitter.com/b3mAhQe7Wm
— Red Bull Holden (@redbullholden) November 4, 2017
11:30am We had some huge autograph sessions this morning, all our kiwi friends came out to say hello. It was sweet as!
8:40am The morning ritual.
7:00am Good morning, friends! Boy, did we need that sleep after yesterday’s actions. Let’s see what today has in store for us…
